In today’s rapidly changing global business environment, many companies are attempting to sell their products across international borders. Unfortunately, not all companies are successful in their attempts to accumulate market share.

“There are definitely dos and don’ts to conducting business in foreign countries,” says Lance Descourouez, a California Vistage Chair and expert in international training and organizational development. “Many companies with terrific products or services fail miserably because they don’t take into account several components critical to success.”

Following are Lance’s recommendations for achieving success in international markets.

Conducting Business in International Markets

• Think globally, act locally. The biggest mistakes happen when either of these two points is missed. Develop big growth strategies, and then tailor them to a local approach.
• Locate and utilize a cultural informant. Be sure to pick the right person — one who lives locally and has significant contacts in the country you’re entering.
• Be innovative and flexible with structure, timing and investment. Focus on how you conduct business, since the way you structure your business in your home country may not work in other cultures.
• Be familiar with local business customs and laws. By understanding how these things pertain to your product, you can minimize future obstacles.
• Recruit skilled nationals. To be more successful and competitive, companies should attempt to find local workers and avoid exporting employees to the country they are newly entering.
• Provide technical training for foreign key executives in your home country. By enabling your foreign senior executives to experience your company headquarters first-hand, you are more likely to have similar results in other locations around the world.
• Remain selective and strategic with all methods of market entry. Research and critically evaluate potential markets prior to taking action.

How to Reach the Right Market

The rules for reaching these markets are different than they are for traditional top-of-the-pyramid markets. Here are a few guidelines:

• Don’t think exports. The base of the pyramid market isn’t the same as what is traditionally thought of as the export market. The export market caters to those in overseas markets who are in the top third of the economic pyramid.
• Big picture thinking is essential. Look at your business model through the lens of the big picture and find the connections between your product line and the vital needs of millions of people in emerging markets. Think in terms of your core competencies, not just your current product line. Re-think products, packaging, distribution channels and production. (For example, Unilever’s new lower-cost detergent has been packaged into single-laundry packets, instead of five to 25 pound boxes that are purchased by the wealthier middle class. They are manufactured in hundreds of regional manufacturing plants, and sold by everyone from small shops to street vendors.)
• Start small. Start with one product in one country. Emerging market economies are complicated enough. If you’re just starting out and your resources are limited, you don’t want to be in more than one new market. Learn everything you can about one emerging market — the lessons can be applied to the next market you decide to enter, and you’ll be on strategic high ground where you can see and pick the market that with most transference and profitability.
• Think large quantities and small margins. The successful product will sell millions of units. At the same time, profit margins need to also be small. Think low profits per unit, but remember you’re selling millions, not hundreds or thousands of your product.
• Set up a “global links initiative” within your company. To be successful in emerging markets, a company needs the top-down commitment of the chief executive and the allocation of significant human resources. A one-to-two-year commitment of a small team is a minimal time-frame to insure success.
• Set up a learning system. Be sure to capture what you learn so your company can apply it in your next product and market. This body of knowledge will prove to be one of your most valuable assets moving into the future.
• Long-term commitment. The company wanting to add the base of the pyramid to its market needs to realize that the next quarter’s profit margins are probably not going to be impacted. When they come, profits will be substantial, but you need to be willing to make a commitment beyond the short-term horizon. Exactly how long your new profit center takes to be at the scale you want depends on your product, its delivery mechanism, the level of commitment, and your local partner.
• Partner creatively. You will need a local partner. This could be a local business, government agency, NGO (non-governmental organization), co-op or other group. In Bangladesh, the Gameen Bank, a very successful micro-lender, is the partner of cell phone manufacturers. Gameen loans women in rural Bangladesh the money to purchase a cell phone that they use to set up a “phone booth” in their village. The women make enough in the first four to eight months to pay off the loan and earn two to three times the national average income after that. The village is now connected to the rest of the world.

“Future historians are going to look back on this decade as the first decade of the 21st century in terms of human thought,” says David Houle “This is the time when we’re going to leave the legacy thinking of the 20th century behind.”

Houle, a renowned futurist, strategist, author and speaker, has dubbed our modern era “The Shift Age”—a period of rapid, disruptive change that first began in 2006. The year 2011 marks the beginning of the Transformation Decade, the first full decade of the Shift Age; over the next 10 years, says Houle, significant changes in technology, the global economy, human experience and leadership will dynamically shape the future of business as we know it. Today’s business leaders must reorganize and adapt or risk failure.

“If the world is changing its nature, shape, character, and form, then you as a leader must change your business,” Houle says. Below, we outline the key points of Houle’s timely and inspiring presentation—and what they mean for your business going forward.

1. Communicate Globally. “Globalization is no longer just an economic term, but a force across all aspects of society,” says Houle. We are truly global citizens, and businesses must reorganize accordingly. For the first time in history, no time, distance, or place limits human communication. The difference between a phone call to someone 10 feet or 12,000 miles away, for example, is only a few seconds. This new reality will permanently change how we conduct business and evaluate market strategies.

2. Separate Work and Place. We can now work from—quite literally—anywhere. Allowing employees to telework regularly will be a strategic advantage to CEOs and managers in 2011 and beyond. “I strongly say if you think a good metric is watching somebody be busy, you’re wrong. We’ve all learned how to be busy and do nothing. I have found companies that let their employees work from home more than two days a week are much more productive because the employees are grateful they have that ability,” says Houle. The office space no longer exists for information transfer (such as in the Information Age, when we needed to work in a wired office), but for collaboration. When people do come together physically, better, more authentic collaboration will occur.

3. Prioritize the Individual. The explosion of choice and the newfound ability to work from anywhere on the planet is shifting us toward an increasingly individualized worldview, and it’s having a dramatic effect on information exchange. “It’s all about my business, my Facebook, my website,” says Houle. “We have created an alternative reality and changed our consciousness.” Individuals now have two realities: the dominant electronic reality of their (computer) screens, and the less-important physical reality of place. We must reorganize the workplace and our products to adapt to the rising power of the personal.

4. Create Networks, Not Structures. Adaptability and resilience are essential to leadership in the Transformation Decade, says Houle. Structures are not adaptable; in the face of change, they break or fall. “If you want to build an organization, think of the concept of a net where your managers are nodes in a net and it’s all connected and it’s flat, it’s not hierarchal,” says Houle. “You have to forget titles if you want to do reorganization. If you want to increase innovation… Just close your eyes and think about the employee in your organization who shows up most innovatively every day.” Flattening the organization encourages innovation and enables collaborative reorganization.

5. Switch to User-Generated Content. Several decades ago, trust was institutional. Products were selected based on advertising content created by institutions. Today, trust is a personal matter; friends and networks recommend products, not institutions. Houle cites a study that shows a 1.5:1 ratio of believability in consumer-generated content vs. institutionally-generated content. Just as you must get rid of hierarchy in your organizational charts, your content and output must also reflect the flattening of authority. User-generated content is now king. In other words, if you put video on your website, make sure it features your customers talking to future customers—not you talking at them.

To succeed in business in 2011 and beyond, Houle believes all leaders will have to actively embody these transformations to best fit their business models. Leading-edge companies like Google and Apple already have; Houle calls these paragons of transformation “Morph Corps.”

Leaders of the next generation of Morph Corps, many of whom are from the Baby Boomer generation, need not fear that their roles will become obsolete in a newly digital world. If anything, quality leadership will be more important. Organizations like Vistage, where CEOs and key executives meet once a month, will provide critical, in-person collaborative opportunities. “We need that high touch,” says Houle. “It’s a human, necessary offshoot to the high tech.”

Who will lead in the Transformation Decade? Not surprisingly, the most successful executives of all will be those who can adapt at the personal level and exemplify true leadership. “[Baby Boomer leaders] need to stand down from thinking they know all the answers, and rather become the core culture… and drive the moral and value direction of the company.”